'Endless Summer' poster guy makes digital waves

Jan. 14, 2009

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Magical Mystery Tour album cover by John Van Hamersveld JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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Artist John Van Hamersveld created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer -- at The Surf Gallery during the last day of his showing in Laguna Beach. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Artist John Van Hamersveld, who created The Endless Summer movie poster makes like he's surfing on Thalia Street Beach the last day of his three week show at The Surf Gallery in Laguna Beach. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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"Bustin' Down The Door" movie poster by John Van Hamersveld. COURTESY JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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Beethoven Gallery Master 2007. John Van Hamersveld, an OC surfer and artist who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer. JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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John Van Hamersveld, an OC surfer and artist who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer. JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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John Van Hamersveld, an OC surfer and artist who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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John Van Hamersveld, an OC surfer and artist who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer. JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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John Van Hamersveld, an OC surfer and artist who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer. JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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John Van Hamersveld, an OC surfer and artist who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer. JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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Endless Summer, 1964, by John Van Hamersveld. JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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Artist John Van Hamersveld, who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer -- on Thalia Street Beach in Laguna Beach. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Artist John Van Hamersveld, who created one of the most iconic movie posters of all time -- The Endless Summer. KEN STEINHARDT, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Art on tee-sheet by John Van Hamersveld. JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

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Mick Jagger wearing one of John's designs Crazy World Ain't It (CWAI). John Van Hamersveld wrote, "The surreal connection between Jagger in 1972, the Record Industry and Vince in 2008 (TV) audiences of the Arts and Entertainment era now. There is 36 years between the two audiences and the CWAI image..." COURTESY JOHN VAN HAMERSVELD

One day he was partying with Mick Jagger and the next he was designing logos for delicatessens and mall furniture stores.

It would take almost 20 years to reinvent himself.

You might think that a 67-year-old man who once designed album covers for the Beatles, Stones and Grateful Dead; a man whose 1968 Jimi Hendrix concert poster recently sold for $16,500; a man whose "Endless Summer" movie posters still sell worldwide - would've settled into a comfortable life of leisure by now.

No. Van Hamersveld rises at 7 a.m. and works till about 2 a.m. seven days a week. Knock on his door, he opens it. Call his phone, he answers. Send an e-mail, he responds.

And responds. And responds.

There remains an unguarded, childlike quality about this sandy-haired man, dressed in black with round-rimmed glasses.

"I'm not rich," he says. "I'm just making a living."

Three years ago, he produced his first rock-concert poster in 21 years - for Cream's reunion at Royal Albert Hall. He followed that with a concert poster for Steve Winwood in New York and a movie poster for "Bustin' Down The Door" - a new surf movie.

Van Hamersveld is back. Is relevant. Is young again.

As proof, he recently hit the road in a rented Jeep, driving 24,000 miles, staying in 68 hotels, to sign his new posters at record stores across the country. He is also finishing a coffee-table book of his life and art, "Post Future," due this fall.

"It's a changing world," he says. "At this age, either you get off the train and that's the end. Or you keep on it and keep fighting."

The man who designed The Endless Summer poster for $150 back in 1964 has rediscovered his own Endless Summer.

And his revival started with a bicycle accident.

MAGICAL MYSTERY TRIP

Back in 1967, a young Van Hamersveld got a phone call: Could he come to New York?

What happened next would determine if he was a one-hit wonder or for real.

Sure, he'd plugged into the clean-cut surf culture for a project with almost no pay and no pressure. But now…

Now he was standing in the office of Brown Meggs, who'd signed the Beatles to Capitol Records.

Now Van Hamersveld was being asked to design a Beatles album cover.

"You're going to take this job," Meggs told him. "You have no other choice."

Beatles' manager Brian Epstein had just died and their erratic new movie, "Magical Mystery Tour," was bombing in England. It was Meggs' job to make sure the album didn't do the same.

"I've got (a photograph) of the band and you can't even see their faces," Meggs said of their promotional art, in which they all wore masks. "We're in trouble."

Meggs had watched "The Endless Summer" usher in the surf culture with the same fanfare that the Beatles ushered in the youth culture a few years earlier. He hoped Van Hamersveld could plug into whatever new culture was bubbling up now.

And Van Hamersveld's career took off. Over the next two years, he created 19 concert posters considered "hallmarks" of the era.

"He captured the feeling of his generation in Southern California, says D. King Gallery owner Dennis King, of Berkeley, who owns one of the world's largest poster collections. "His graphics were groundbreaking. If you look at Top 50 images from that era, John's got quite a few in there."

In 1972, Van Hamersveld hooked up with the Rolling Stones to design their "Exile on Main Street" album cover.

"There I was, sitting on an Ottoman with Jagger in a Bel Air mansion," he says.

Using a stack of photos, tape and torn paper, he created an aesthetically unpleasant look that confounded many in the day. Years later, however, Rolling Stone magazine hailed it as a "punk-before-there-was-punk collage."

Once again, Van Hamersveld had put his finger on the pulse. (He'd also given Jagger one of his "Johnny Face" T-shirts which evolved into the Stones' tongue logo.)

Through much of the '70s, '80s and '90s, the wave rode Van Hamersveld. He watched the counter-culture - for which he'd become an artistic voice - get swallowed by corporate culture. All he could do was hang on.

He designed a few album covers into the '80s, but for the most part he took on corporate work himself: trademarks, logos, signage for Contemporary Casuals, Broadway Deli and FatBurger.

Then one day in 1992, while riding bikes with his kids, he tried to jump a curb and fell, shattering his elbow. It might've been the best thing that ever happened to him.

In physical rehab, he started drawing again - for the first time in nearly 20 years. Then he started working with a computer. Then he learned how the entire printing process was overtaken by digital technology. He embraced it.

"The last 10 years have been the Communication Age," he says of the advent of high-speed Internet and digital technology. "But we have so much communication, we don't know what to do with it."

The answer? Take what is old and make it new.

Van Hamersveld uploaded his entire catalog onto a Web site.

"There was an immediate reaction," he says, "so I started drawing posters again."

That brought on his 2005 work with Cream and Steve Winwood and surf movie "Bustin' Down The Door." It brought on his national tour. His redesign of several old posters - of Lennon, Hendrix and an old Indian portrait found in a secondhand store. And his upcoming book.

After that, he plans to start painting again, which he hasn't done in 40 years.

"It doesn't feel like work," he says, "because what I do is continually changing, and I keep finding new experiences."

Spoken like man looking for the next wave in a summer than never ends.

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